malmin blog

Don’t Forget To Clean Your Tongue!

Inside your mouth you should find space for eight molars, eight incisors, four canines and eight premolars. All of these need cleaning twice a day for at least two minutes. This, you might consider, is quite a lot of time. After spending time doing this you should add a few more seconds to clean your tongue. This is because it’s one place in your mouth that harbours bacteria and it is dangerous bacteria that can cause so much damage to your teeth without you knowing it’s actually happening. Bad breath also becomes more evident if you don’t clean your tongue often enough.

When tongue cleaning first started

Cleaning the tongue isn’t new as it originated in the days of the Roman Empire. It didn’t find its way to Europe until well into the 18th century. It wasn’t until the 19th century that tools were first invented to specifically clean the tongue. The tools were usually made from materials such as ivory, silver, turtle shell and bone.

How to clean your tongue and eliminate bad breath

A typical tongue cleaner today resembles a toothbrush with a larger head but it tends to have more bristles and is flatter. This type of design provides a high comfort level when used on your tongue to remove damaging food debris.

Bad breath, sometimes called halitosis, is an infliction that no one likes but it affects as many as 9 million British citizens. Sufferers tend to think that it can be solved by spending millions of pounds on over the counter products like mouth rinses, sprays, chewing gum and specially formulated toothpaste. However, to be absolutely realistic about the problem these sorts of products simply mask it, rather than solve it. One of the solutions is to clean the tongue because when debris left behind by food remains on the tongue for too long it starts to decay and ends up as a sulphurous compound which tends to give off an unsavoury odour.

Results from a recent study found in the journal Microbiology have revealed that tongue cleaning might remove 500 different kinds of bacteria, food debris, dead tissue and fungi. This means it’s essential to clean the tongue so these bacteria don’t find their way into your teeth and cause tooth decay. Even though food has a far greater chance of becoming trapped amongst your teeth, germs can form on your tongue that can spread elsewhere. If you fail to clean your tongue you may be more susceptible to the bacteria causing plaque build up and bad breath. This means you could end up losing teeth, which is quite avoidable.

The best way to avoid tooth loss is to make an appointment every six months with your Malmin dentist who will advise you about the necessity of cleaning your tongue and who be able to catch any problems with your teeth at an earlier enough stage so treatment doesn’t become a big issue.

If you have other questions about keeping your mouth healthy, don’t be afraid to contact us!

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